10. God’s Love Is Most Real

On the night of July 21, 2012, we had a huge flood here, which seldom happens. I would like to tell everyone who thirsts for God what I actually experienced and saw then.

On the day my husband and I took care of the fodder yard for my sister. In the night heavy rain kept on pouring down, and we went to sleep very early. At 3:45 a.m. my brother-in-law called saying: “They’re going to open the reservoir! Everything is going to be flooded! We have to get up fast!” On hearing this I was shocked, and all I knew to cry out to God in my heart was the words, “Oh God! Oh God!” I only knew I had to protect the electric scooter, and the MP5 player and TF card used for listening to hymns and sermons. In great anxiety I went to the store room to push the electric scooter out, and I drove off wanting to go home to check on my books of the words of God and also as I was worried about my mother-in-law and my children. I drove up to the highway, but because I couldn’t see in the heavy rain I hit a piece of asphalt that had been washed down in the torrent, and the scooter and I rolled into the waters. In my heart I was praying, “Oh God, it is Your righteousness, if I am washed away today. Spare me, and I will do my duty in earnest from now on!” At this point one of my shoes had been washed away, so I decided to take highway. But when I went ahead and looked, I was stunned; it turned out that the side of the road was fenced off, and I couldn’t get through. I stumbled into the waters again and my other shoe was washed away. The waters had risen now up to my thighs, and I had no choice but to go back for the third time, all the time praying in my heart. At this moment a family of three emerged from one of the other pig farms, and I gave thanks to God from my heart. I joined them and was preparing to take the highway again, when my husband turned up. He used a drill shank to open up a hole in the wire mesh and I was first to leap through barefoot and got up onto the highway. To the south was a bend in the river flowing north, and to the north the main road was streaming with water running south, so we were caught in the middle with our only choice being to take the highway.

When I got up onto the highway and looked down, my legs went weak. Not far from where we stay is a steel plant; a track two meters or more wide separates our place from the wall surrounding the factory. The waters inside the wall were over a meter deep, and even the houses with the coloured steel tiling in the factory were afloat. Now I prayed again: “Oh God, I thank You for saving me. It is because of my greed for wealth that I do not listen to the words of God, and act stiff-necked. I have erred!” If the water had burst out on the north side, it would have washed us away some time after two o’clock in the morning. It had, however, burst out from the foot of the wall on the south side, and submerged the pig farms below. This time I had truly seen God’s almightiness; for those who believe in Him even disasters will step aside.

We stayed in the tunnel on the highway for nearly three hours before coming off it and going home. When I got home and opened my food bag, miraculously neither the MP5 player nor the TF card was wet. When my electric scooter fell into the waters they went in too; the scooter charger had been wetted, and other things as well. Only my MP5 player and TF card were undamaged. I had witnessed God’s miraculous deeds.

When I returned to the fodder yard, what I saw amazed me. The fodder yard’s compound was only filled with the rain that had fallen overnight; not much water had gotten into it. There was water in the patch of corn in the front, and it was deep in the patch at the back, but there wasn’t much on the fodder ground: God had preserved it.

Through this flood, my heart has grown much calmer, and I know now what is most important. People often say that money is everything, but when disaster strikes, money won’t save me; God is my real Master. I will no longer pursue money, and I will give up the fodder yard and throw myself into evangelical work. I went out that day to preach the gospel to my aunt, my mother and sister-in-law. They listened to my experience and accepted it. In the past my mother and sister-in-law had persecuted me for believing in God; I had preached to them for four years, but they would not believe. At this moment I saw more clearly God’s almightiness. My husband persecuted me before, but now he has stopped, and I am preaching the gospel to him. In the past I couldn’t open my mouth to preach, I didn’t dare speak. Through this experience I will no longer shrink away; I am willing to spare no efforts to take my experience and bear witness. Since I saw and experienced God’s salvation and His most true and real love in the trial of disaster, how can I not bear witness for Him?